Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 02/10/20

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, February 10, 2020

The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009)

Cast: Isaach De Bankolé, Alex Descas, Jean-François Stévenin, Óscar Jaenada, Luis Tosar, Paz de la Huerta, Tilda Swinton, Yûki Kudô, John Hurt, Gael García Bernal, Hiam Abbass, Bill Murray. Screenplay: Jim Jarmusch. Cinematography: Christopher Doyle. Production design: Eugenio Caballero. Film editing: Jay Rabinowitz.

The Limits of Control displays the limits of Jim Jarmusch's quirky minimalism. It's a story about an assassin (Isaach De Bankolé) who moves from place to place as he receives coded messages from various agents, zeroing in on his target (Bill Murray). The places are picturesque and nicely filmed by Christopher Doyle, and the agents are played in cameos by the likes of Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, and Gael García Bernal, which provides some interest to an otherwise rather plodding and repetitious movie.

Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019)

Cast: voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Madeleine McGraw, Christina Hendricks, Jordan Peele, Keanu Reeves, Ally Maki, Jay Hernandez, Lori Alan, Joan Cusack, Bonnie Hunt, Kristen Schaal, Emily Davis. Screenplay: Andrew Stanton, Stephany Folsom, Josh Cooley. Cinematography: Jean-Claude Kalache, Patrick Lin. Production design: Bob Pauley. Film editing: Axel Geddes. Music: Randy Newman.

Wouldn't you know it: On the night that the Oscars get interesting, I decide not to watch them. Instead, I watched Toy Story 4, which at least won for best animated feature while I was watching it. That was, of course, one of the more predictable wins of the night, along with the four acting awards. The fourth Toy Story movie is on a par with the other three: a solid representative of the Pixar formula mix of laughs, thrills, and tears. I did have the feeling that by now its world of toys has become overpopulated, and that the movie might have been better if the old familiars from Andy's (now Bonnie's) toy box -- Rex, Hamm, Slinky, the Potato Heads, etc. -- had been jettisoned so that the adventures of the newcomers could have been given a sharper focus. But I did like the attempt at closure in the film's ending, when Woody goes off to start a new life with Bo Peep and the other lost toys. I just hope Pixar can resist the temptation to make Toy Story 5 or to start a new series of Lost Toys that will go to infinity and beyond.